They would ask me what actors I saw in the roles. I would tell them, and they’d say “Oh that’s interesting.” And that would be the end of it.
--Elmore Leonard, in 2000, on the extent of his input for Hollywood's adaptation of his novels

Monday, September 18, 2017

Cora Harrison's "Beyond Absolution"

Cora Harrison published twenty-six children's books before turning to adult novels with the "Mara" series of Celtic historical mysteries set in 16th century Ireland.

Here she dreamcasts an adaptation of her latest novel, Beyond Absolution, the third book in the Reverend Mother Mystery Series:

I had no hesitation here. I have immediately chosen Angela Lansbury to star in the movie of my book.

The main character in Beyond Absolution is an elderly Reverend Mother, superior of an order of nuns whose main task is to provide an education for the children of the poor. Cork city in the south of Ireland was, at that time, a place where terrible poverty and dreadful slums co-existed with wealth and splendid houses, built by the merchant princes on the hills well outside the filth and fog that envelope the city and its slums.

The Reverend Mother is by birth and upbringing one of the merchant princes’ class, but all her sympathies and her life’s work lie among the poor of Cork. She is no saint, though and possesses a sharp sarcastic tongue and a shrewd judgement of people and their weaknesses, whether they are among the privileged or the destitute of Cork.

I’ve had fun writing this character – somehow I never hesitate. Her opinions flow from my finger tips to the screen, her occasional sarcasm, her compassion, her interest in her pupils, her overwhelming desire to help the children, her boredom with excessive piety, her impatience with the bishop and his opinions. I can just see and hear Angela Lansbury in the part. And I hope that the long summers she has spent in southern Ireland would give her an interest in bringing the character of a Cork nun to the screen.

“Compared to a novel, a film is like an economy pizza where there are no olives, no ham, no anchovies, no mushrooms, and all you’ve got is the dough.”
--Louis de Bernières, author of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin